Thursday, 8 September 2011

Poster Boy

Here's a video on Poster boy, a New york street artist, whose (quote) 'only utensil is a razor blade and creative genius...his work is inventive, simple in concept but extremely effective in how he uses the idea of hegemony and brain washing advertising to create satirical artwork.

The most amazing thing about this video is how quick he creates his work with a small audience of onlookers just kind of watching him bemused but he is so quick and the outcome is eye-catching, surreal and takes collage to the next level. In the video it seems as though he goes to the tube line with a considered idea of what he wants to create or he simply just go along and see what inspires him..I'm not sure...but i do wonder why he got arrested in 2009, as is this really graffiti? O.k so he is defacing the adverts but aren't the adverts themselves defacing the building, who really wants to see an advert for one crappy film everywhere they go for 4 weeks then same repeated for some sun tan lotion the next month. I'd say he is doing the public a superhero type service by transporting us out of the everyday mundane attempted brainwashing. I love his work.

Here is an excerpt from an article about poster boy written for http://www.guardian.co.uk/.The city's zero tolerance policy towards petty crime has long eradicated painted graffiti from the trains themselves, and most graffiti practitioners are now reduced to "scratchiti" where logos are etched into the windows of the carriages.

Poster Boy has taken the reliance on razor blades inherent in scratchiti and put it to much more sophisticated and intriguing use. He realised that the film and product adverts at subway stations are now made with self-adhesive backing, rendering them giant stickers, which can be cut up into bits and remodelled in an echo of a digital mash-up.

So the Hollywood star Alec Baldwin is recast with a red nose and blue tears. The Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, appearing on a poster advertising Puma shoes, is metamorphosed so that he now lends his name to the fast food chain McDonald's, with the headline "McDorse the world".

The anti-consumerist edge is put to even more overt political use in posters such as one for the film Iron Man which is remoulded as Iran = Nam.

More than 400 such interventions in less than a year has earned the artist a large internet following. A short video on YouTube, Spending Time With Poster Boy, has been viewed 785,897 times. He was also featured on an underground art website called Friends We Love, wearing a businessman's white shirt and tie but with his face pixellated.

The Guardian's Guide magazine caught up with Poster Boy in Brooklyn last month and heard his explanation of his work. "The idea of taking your environment into your own hands and making it what you want. As long as you're not hurting other people, it can't be bad."

Video: poster boy : friends we love.com' realising there is a difference between what is just and what is legal.' This is probably why he got arrested....he does kind of suggest that people should break the laws surrounding street art to 'stick to the man' so to speak...